As expected, President Trump on Wednesday recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and announced plans to relocate the U.S. embassy there, a decision that is certain to inflame tensions in the region and throw a wrench in potential peace negotiations, paradoxically uniting the fractured middle east world against Israel and the U.S.

"I have determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," Trump said shortly after 1pm in the White House.

Trump said the announcement “marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and Palestinians.”

As discussed earlier, Trump’s move reverses decades of American policy in the Middle East and alienates regional allies, even as the president has made brokering an elusive Middle East peace deal a key goal.

“This is a long overdue step to advance the peace process and work towards a lasting agreement”, Mr Trump said in his remarks. He added that he was directing the US State Department to develop a plan to move its Israel embassy from its current location in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Trump framed the decision as a way to put his own stamp on one of history’s oldest conflicts.

“The record is in: after more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians,” the president said. “It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result."

The move showed Trump’s inclination to prioritize domestic politics over the desires of U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe who warned the announcement could spark violence in a region that is already a powder keg.

"While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver," the president said. "Today, I am delivering."

It will hardly play out that way.

As Bloomberg notes, leaders across the Middle East, including from Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League have also spoken out against the plan, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Trump’s plan a sign of U.S. “failure and impotence.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, warned him the announcement would have “dangerous” repercussions for regional stability. Separately, the Palestinian delegate to the United Kingdom said on Wednesday that President Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel signals "a declaration of war" in the region. “He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims, hundreds of millions of Christians that are not going to accept the holy shrines to be totally under the hegemony of Israel,” Manuel Hassassian told BBC 4 Radio's "Today."

The Turkish government’s spokesman on Wednesday said that the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will plunge the region and the world into “a fire with no end in sight”.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the “whole world is against” Trump’s move. He says that moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be a “grave mistake” and would “not bring any stability, peace but rather chaos and instability.”

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has also blasted Washington's decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem as a display of incompetence. "That they claim they want to announce Quds as the capital of occupied Palestine is because of their incompetence and failure," Khamenei said, using the Arabic name for Jerusalem.

The Syrian government also weighed in on the planned move. "[The move] is the culmination of the crime of usurping Palestine and displacing the Palestinian people," a Foreign Ministry official told state news agency SANA.

Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem were spotted burning photographs of Donald Trump and holding signs reading “Move the embassy to your country, not ours,” and “Jerusalem, Palestine's heart, is not up to negotiations.”

The declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital carries deep symbolic significance and could have dangerous consequences. The competing claims to east Jerusalem, the section of the city captured by Israel in 1967, have frequently boiled over into deadly violence over the years. East Jerusalem is home to the city’s most sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, as well as its 330,000 Palestinian residents.

The United States has never endorsed the Jewish state’s claim of sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem and has insisted its status be resolved through Israeli-Palestinian negotiation.

The mere consideration of Trump changing the status quo sparked a renewed U.S. security warning on Tuesday. America’s consulate in Jerusalem ordered U.S. personnel and their families to avoid visiting Jerusalem’s Old City or the West Bank, and urged American citizens in general to avoid places with increased police or military presence.

so now the arabs will hate israel and threaten to kill them all and throw them into the sea even more than they have hated israel and threatened to kill them all and throw them into the sea for the last 60+ years?

What is weird is this, that 2000 years ago, there were no people even resembling Jews in the middle-east at all.

Turns out that there is not a single ancient Jewish city in what is now called Israel. There is not a single city where the Hebrew script is used on the statues and buildings. There is not a single city where the buildings are in the ancient Jewish architectural style. In fact, there is not even a category of "ancient Jewish architectural style".

If you check out all the ancient cities in Israel, they are all Greek, and their ruins are still there for you to visit. Their inscriptions are in the Greek script and the buildings are in the ancient Greek architectural styles.

Dude! cmon man you pegged my dhimmi bullshit meter off the scale!I'll tell you where Jerusalem in not mentioned, not even once is in the Koran!But mentioned 160+ times in the Bible.Your argument is one of the Islamic fantasy arguments. The islamic holyness of jerusalem is all made up bullshit.Islamic fake nuus. Grimaldus

You do realize, don't you, that Muslims consider the Torah, The Book of Psalms (from the Old Testament) and the Gospel of Jesus Christ to be the foundations of their faith, with the addition of the Koran? That the Muslims revere the rest of the Old and New Testaments as holy too, but full of mistranslations and trivia regarding certain tribal groups which don't add to and do detract from understanding of the real meat of divine revelation?So all the mentions of Jerusalem in the Old and New Testaments count for the Muslims too. And if there's no mention in the Koran, that makes them even in total references, as if that proved anything.Besides, the city should belong to the people who live there. Not the people who immigrated from mostly Russia in the past 70 years, or were shipped there by the English and Americans from the rest of Europe. Or by Americans pretending to have such deep ethnic roots in a place they've never been except recently as tourists.HInt: People from Jerusalem look like Greeks and Arabs. They don't look like they're from Boca Raton or Warsaw.

Well you got dhimmwit of the day special runner up!You mean this bullshit?"In the Islamic version, Jesus was taken to heaven and will return to "destroy the cross" (according to the Hadith) and all religions other than Islam. ""Quran 61:6 - Jesus said, "O Children of Israel! I am the messenger of Allah (sent) to you, confirming the Law (which came) before me, and giving Glad Tidings of a Messenger to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad." "Quran 5:116 - Allah will say: "O Jesus the son of Mary! Didst thou say unto men, worship me and my mother as gods in derogation of Allah'?" He will say: "Glory to Thee! never could I say what I had no right (to say). Had I said such a thing, thou wouldst indeed have known it. Thou knowest what is in my heart."What a joke. Fairy tales of Mohammad. Allah hates unbeleivers with a passion."the Quran specifically labels Christians as blasphemers (5:17 , 5:72) who invent a lie about Allah (10:68-69) - the worst of crimes - and will thus suffer in Hell. While they are in Hell, good Muslims, presumably including Jesus, will mock them while they are being tortured and ask where "their Lord" is (22:19-22)."https://thereligionofpeace.com/pages/myths/jesus.aspxMohammad came some 600 years AFTER Jesus and still could not be bothered about Jerusalem to mention it even once. Islamic claims to Jerusalem are all recent political bullshit, just like Russiagate by the Democrats. Grimaldus

As for damaging the peace process, give us a break ... there has not been peace in the middle east in our lifetimes, and there never will be. Recognising Jerusalem as the Capital doesn't make one whit of difference.

well arizona was apache land long before it was arizona. sometimes what it is now is more important than what it used to be. in any case i think trump is changing the u.s. line on israel, palestine and the (never going to happen in a million years) "two state solution". he has already become the first u.s. president to acknowledge that a one state solution, all palestinians become full voting citizens of israel (super simple to implement, no fucking maps, no new rules of engagement, no relationships between nations and on and on and zzzzzz, boom!). i am reminded of the reaction of alexander the great to the gordian knot, which could not be untied. he cut it with his sword. so too donald trump, mocked as a buffoon which in some ways he seems to be, could well be moving toward actually solving the problem of israeli occupied palestine. rather than try to get the israelis to give up some land (theoretically back to the green line of 1967), which of course they never will do, give it all to them, every smidgen. and then make them make good on their (so far spurious) claim of being a democracy. shame them and cajole them and threaten them with boycotts until the world is united as one against their utterly untenable position of trying to run an apartheid country in the twenty first century.busting 9-11 in the process might reduce their leverage and their confidence, just a little.

Oh, there will be again. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but certainly not "Never." There was peace there during the Ottoman Empire. The Romans managed to keep the peace, more or less, considering it is an argumentative neighborhood. Greeks, Jews, Arabs, some Persians; uh, yeah, there are going to be some arguments. And a lot of arm-waving. And mint tea, really strong thick chewy coffee, olives, and lamb dishes with lemon and tabouli and variations on baklava, which is what I'd eat all day long if I were a god.Recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel is just a nasty small-minded thing to do, currying favor with the one group in the area who can do the US the least good. Actually, it's pursuing the age-old strategy of Empire, taking a minority that's disliked and nasty to everyone else and setting them up to be in power over the rest of the locals, completely dependent on the Imperial power for their very survival, much less superiority. It works pretty well as long as the Empire is strong. And it makes a bloodbath inevitable as soon as the Empire recedes. Anyone playing that game is asking for it, unless they don't have to stick around for long.

Wrong. Turn it into the World's Largest Roach Motel.Every nimrod nursing a Bronze Age Blood Feud should be encouraged to go to Jerusalem and fight for their volcano demon, black rock, thetans, and/or flying spaghetti monster.Gather them all in one place and let them (finally) genocide each other to death.The End.

Whatever. You Theists get all worked up about stuff that's been translated and rephrased so many times into and out of so many languages with words that mean different things and you claim it's all literal truth, though you fight wars over which text it is.And to those of us who aren't Theists, it's all the same stuff all over the world, with the only differences being fairly minor ones easily accounted for by geographical factors, which influence local cultural differences and are mostly superficial. We just wish you folks would quit getting hung up on the minutiae of ancient fairy tales and pay attention to the very real similarities that apply to all humans. If you would, you wouldn't be so easily manipulated by the very secular and contemporary motivations of all those who stir you up about supposedly ancient and religious feuds. All the proclaimed intractable religious conflicts seem suspiciously to do with water, land, money, trade, power, food, and the usual things people fight over, regardless of what cover story they come up with.If anyone who had any interest in such research did DNA profiles on current residents of the region, compared to the DNA profiles of remains from the time these Holy Books were supposedly written down, they'd find the current residents who are related to the past residents were mostly, in fact probably almost entirely, Muslims today.If you want to look back far enough, we're all Tanzanian.I upvoted you for effort and giving a shit, though I do think you've wildly missed any relevant point.

My Pastor a real nononsence American was talking to few of the Brothers over a beer at the barbecue after, the womwn and children had gone home and in his unmistakably clear way of speaking he intimated that he 'personally' didn't love the Jews or anyone else much, but the Jews are in the 'Book' and until the Temple Mount is cleared and the new Temple is built Jesus won't come back, but God did promise to come back and as he said; If only we could figure out a way to give him a kick in the Ass and get him moving that would be the best thing for everyone! We all laughed at that of course, but really, why couldn't we apply a little pressure and make him keep his promise?

well your pastor doent know how to properly divide the Script between the flesh and the Spirit, the next temple is going to be one made without hands as you were made without hands. " know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit". i would guess that there will never be another temple built there, find a new pastor or better yet read the script for yourself

At the risk of legitimizing your imbecilic premise that it is somehow reasonable for modern global politics to be influenced by the number of times a word is mentioned in the texts of ancient kike fairytales, you ought to at least be corrected here: As the story goes, mentioned in both the Qu'ran and later detailed in hadith collections, the archangel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad in Mecca, gave him a horse, and led him to a location in Jerusalem (later to become the Al-Aqsa mosque) where he was tested and ascended into heaven to speak with Jesus, John the Baptist, Moses, Abraham, etc -- the importance of which led the first Muslims to face the direction of Jerusalem when praying (up until they were instructed to face the Kaaba instead.)But this is merely an attempt at educating you on the same religious stories you seem to hold in such high regard; not meant as any justification for a claim over Jerusalem. For that, I'd be more likely to point you towards the UN Security Council resolution 478 barring Israel's claim over Jerusalem, reaffirming it as an international city, as well as UN Security Council resolution 2334 finding Israel's land grabs in Jerusalem a violation of the Geneva convention. However... You, being either a kike or a slave of zionist subverted christianity, likely find the hocus-pocus of international law inapplicable to the "chosen people", and for now it certainly seems to be. Hopefully, though, each time you spout off your mindless and uneducated zealotry, it will serve as a warning to readers how steadfast and careful we must be in preventing the lunatics from running the asylum -- to avoid waking up one morning in the midst of a nuclear war over a worthless pile of dirt in a faraway land at the behest of the most toxic and abrasive tribe of people in all of human history.

Ah, well... very mysterious... and, btw, I didn't df you... but you might want to consider that:A) The Greeks built over the ruins of other civilizations.B) The Jews were, through much of their history, a nomadic people.I don't really care, but just a thougth...

Indeed. Solid stone blocks weighing hundreds of tonnes. Baalbek and Tyre are beautiful examples of long lost civilization. Highly advanced building techniques littered everywhere, and the pyramids of Bosnia and Egypt are just the tip of the iceberg.Beautifully sculptured figurines made of solid marble. For all eyes to see in a St Petersburg museum. Virtually Impossible to create to this very day. Canals build/engineered well before the invention of steam shovels. Check out newearth youtube page for starters. Her team have traveled the breadth of Europe, the Caucasus and Russia uncovering a forgotten past probably going back aeon's. P.S Wikipedia sources are full of Smithsonian BS. The same BS found in your school text books.

Hey Slack ASS, first just to point out how fucking stupid you are, Trump is not MOVING the Israelis capital. Israel has always said that Jerusalem was their capital, Trump is just stating that the US is now going to formally recognize that statement. And second, what is your point about the Greek cities? That area was settled first by the Isrealis and Christians long before Muhammad showed up. Actually all of the northern part of Africa, the middle east, and most of europe was catholic before the Muslims showed up like an infestation of cockroaches and took over some of those areas. Look at the Muslim holy site in Jerusalem, guess what it is built on top of the ANCIENT RUINS OF THE JEWISH TEMPLE. asshole.

NumNutt Actually it was all GREEKs that settled there first even Alexandria in Egypt was built by GREEKS NOT CATHOLICS. The Jewish people settled there in what is called Jerusalem before the ARABS. You can't make this shit up because the FIRST ALPHABET language /CIVILIZED CULTURES were the GREEKS. IT"S undisputed you can't rewrite history.THE JEWS are more logical then the ARABS JUST LOOK AT EUROPE TODAY. Also Jordan has taken land from the Palestinians but no one talks about that. Jews have a right to have there country because ARABS are Neanderthals. BOTTOM LINE Military industrial complex wins in this case.

The Bible states that the Jewish temple was in the city of David. Not where the Mosque now stands. If I remember correctly, when Jesus came out of the temple when he was in Jerusalem, his disciples remarked about all of the buildings. And Jesus told them that there would not be a stone left upon a stone. And so it happened in 70AD when Roman General Titus leveled Jerusalem to the ground. That so called wailing wall that those silly Jews are praying at is a wall left standing of the Roman garrison Fort Antonia. Imagine that, all of these Jews praying to the Roman god Jupiter.

What is weird is this, that 2000 years ago, there were no people even resembling Europeans in America.Turns out that there is not a single ancient European city in what is now called America. ....The ancient European cities in America are, ... well there aren't any. Not even one.

and s/he makes a very good point. arguing about which group, the palestinians or the jews, should occupy eretz israel (here taken to mean the land currently controlled by israel including all conquests of the six day war in 1967), including trading insults about who is more barbaric, wooly disputes about ancient, poorly understood history, my goodness even the unseen (and probably nonexistent) world of religion, -- screw it!! don't try to divide it up between them. make them live together and work it out as one nation. the jews will be surprised how fast the palestinians drop their rocks and rockets when offered israeli citizenship with all its fabulous advantages. oh and bye the by, it is the right thing to do.the palestinian leaders will hate the idea and scream loudly but that is what they must do. they will be out of a job until they get voted into parliament, if ever they do.

what a great idea.......yeah that will work.....just like it has worked-out so fabulously in the ussa......the dual citizens in this country have integrated so well into the christian culture........and have integrated so well that the host nation has voted in vain for how many years......

Cui Bono? Eratz Yisrael! But why avoid talking about the 800-pound-gorilla-in the-room? According to an article by Philip Giraldi (who was recently fired by the American Conservative Magazine for merely pointing out the 800-pound-gorilla-in the-room: Israel-firsters and their collaborators controlling US foreign policy) Colonel Pat Lang, former special ops officer and head of the Defense Humint Service, [wrote]: "The U.S. military now seems to be totally focused on Israeli policy goals in Iran, Syria and Iran..." "...The process of conditioning American officers to make them Zionists has been ongoing for a long time..." "...The indoctrination and conditioning program described by Shoshana Bryen began in earnest after that and has carried through to the present under the umbrella of AIPAC and its galaxy of linked organizations especially JINSA..." "...As a result, there is an unthinking willingness among senior, and not so senior American officers to support Israeli policy in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and now Saudi Arabia. The handful of M[iddle] E[ast] trained and educated U.S. officers are ignored, treated as technical experts or shoved out the door when they speak up..."